Perfect, Julio. But in fact the MERCOSUR is not an unanimity among the
Brazilian bourgeoisie. Just before the trip to Peru, Cardoso had decided to
concede a huge subsidy -in the form both of fiscal renunciations and cheap
credits - for the setting of a FORD motorcar plant in the Northeastern state of
Bahia, in order to placate the arch-grey eminence of the regime, namely the
Senator from Bahia Antonio Carlos Magalhaes. The degree of public funds directed
towards this doubtful enterprise (there are at least 10 motorcar plants
presently benefiting from such subsidies, and there will be no market enough to
accommodate all of them) is a scandal, and it was perhaps of that that the
Workers' Part governor of Rio Grande do Sul decided not to give Ford the
subsidies in the level previously accorded by the former governor from the party
of Cardoso - a decision which made Ford decide to move the plant to Bahia. By
deciding to give subsidies to this plant, Cardoso has strained relations with
the Argentinean industry, which hoped to sell spare parts to the new Ford plant,
something made impossible when the said plant moved northwards.

Therefore, Cardoso's visit to Peru must be viewed, partly, as a quest of
alternative markets in Latin America, just in case the present strains in
Mercosur aggravate. Of course, Cardoso cannot agree about supporting any kind of
American intervention in Colombia, something that would hardly please extreme
right-wingers in the Brazilian Armed Forces, which view with suspicion American
ecological concerns over the Amazonian basin.

It must be noted, also, that the main cause of concern so far in the eyes of
Braz. right-wing diehards is exactly the setting-up, during the Collor
government of a huge, W. European-country-sized, reservation for the Yanomami
indians, something that the said right-wingers regard as the 1st. step towards
the proclaiming of the existence op a Yanomami nation stretching across the
border with Venezuela, that would proclaim its independence from both Brazil and
Venezuela under US protection. If ever such an scheme begins to happens outside
the realm of right-wingers conspiracy theories (the Yanomami so far have no
political organization whatsoever) I wonder what kind of agonizing choices that
will pose for the International Left...

Nevertheless, there are no political conditions whatsoever for any kind of
Brazilian interference on the US side in Colombia, given the disruptive effects
that would have on the already hugely unpopular Cardoso government. But of
course American interference there will be- I believe, most of it covert. BTW,
it's interesting to note that, nowadays, warfare as it was conceived in the
beginning of the century - legitimate agents of the state issuing orders and
sending from hundreds to millions of their own people to their deaths - is being
increasingly superseded. either by high-tech aerial bombing, or by covert
operations achieved by paramilitaries, soldiers of fortune, etc. The fact that
the 2nd. alternative is the one available to most countries today put the issue
that warfare is increasingly returning to its pre-French Revolution character- a
dirty affair made by mercenaries living mainly from looting.